Councilman Simcha Felder fancies himself the pigeon Pied Piper. He proposes to lead New York's rats with wings out of town by fining the hands that feed them.
From an AP story in today's Times.
Noting that pigeons produce an average of 25 pounds of droppings each year, Councilman Simcha Felder, a Brooklyn Democrat, proposed that the city impose a $1,000 fine for feeding pigeons. “We have pigeons doing whatever they do all over the city without anyone trying to stop it,” he said.
While pigeons were beloved residents of the city for more than a century, as their population exploded, New Yorkers began to call for their extermination. Unfortunately, the law has proven incapable of curbing the feeding of pigeons and the streets are now paved with droppings.
Take this case from 1936, in which a woman who was feeding Midtown pigeons 100 pounds of cracked corn a day had the book thrown at her to no avail:
PIGEON BREAD LINE STOPPED BY COURT
Woman freed after agreeing to give up feeding 46t St. flock 3 times a dayJune 27, 1936
A complaint of disorderly conduct against Cleo Long of 25 West Forty-sixth Street was dismissed in West Side Court yesterday after she had signed a promise on the back of the summons promising to discontinue the bread line for pigeons she has been conducting three times a day in Forty-sixth Street between Fifth and 6th Avenues.
The complainant was another woman, Denna Denny of 30 West Forty-sixth Street. She told Magistrate Earl A. Smith that the pigeons had made the balcony of her apartment on the second floor front unfit for occupancy and they had also destroyed her "garden" of potted plants. Showing a tobacco tin filled with feathers, she said the birds had been annoying her for two years and that several month ago, in desperation, she put up a scarecrow on the balcony. The scarecrow, however, merely amused passers-by, so it was taken down.
But the pigeons did not cooperate,
Not long after the law had acted nearly 100 of the birds were perched expectantly on the balcony in question and on window ledges of buildings at 24, 26, and 25 Forty-sixth Street and others were wheeling above.
In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty. Do you agree?
Posted by: Air Jordan | March 07, 2011 at 07:41 AM